The nine-month consultation found that those receiving and providing care favoured a framework in which most of the funding came from the state, with a fixed percentage from the user.

It condemned the unpopular means-testing system under which the elderly are forced to use their homes or savings to pay care fees as "not fit for purpose" and calls for it to be scrapped.

The report is aimed at shaping the Government's planned reform of the system. More than 700 elderly people and experts in long-term care were questioned for the survey which is published by the Caring Coalition of 15 charities, led by the King's Fund and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

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The charities urged the Government to help devise preferential equity release schemes for the elderly.

These would give a homeowner a loan on the value of their property, and would allow an elderly person to stay in their home but pay for care.

Ministers should also support long-term care insurance schemes which do not rip off the elderly.

Mervyn Kohler, of Help the Aged, said: "These schemes - equity release and insurance - should not be left to the open market.

"We want the Government to do for older people what it has done for students (with a publicly underwritten scheme with low interest rates along the lines of student loans).

"The Government needs to ensure people get good rates and go for the right schemes which are offered to older people at very competitive prices."

Around 40,000 people a year are forced to sell their home to pay for a care home place. A third of the 130,000 people who go into homes each year pay for their own care.

Ministers have signalled major reform of social care and the means-tested system. The Government has indicated it favours a universal entitlement together with "co-payment".

A universal entitlement would mean everyone would get a contribution towards their bills, and then there would be a sliding scale which would leave the best-off paying most of their own costs.

This would be similar to the "personal care" payment given to all care home residents in Scotland, which is worth between £145 and £210 a week, depending on how much help they need. But ministers have refused to be drawn on details.

Today's Caring Coalition report says that between 2002 and 2026, the number of older people requiring care is likely to rise by 50 per cent, and costs per head will also rise.